Literary Review of Sex

I don’t profess to be a good writer. I am not writing to be brilliant or proficient in any way. I am writing because I enjoy it.
Writing relaxes me. It is one of the ways that I meditate, allowing my mind to wander off in a multitude of directions. I am sure that this is quite evident in my style.
They are my wanderings, my musings and consequently, for the reader, may not be as cohesive as they could be. But then they are probably not supposed to be.
For that really is one of the points of meditation – clearing your mind and just seeing where your thoughts end up.

Sometimes my writing is post-meditation, when I have considered a subject for some time and the writing is the plenary – the gathering of thoughts together so that I have them written down for posterity. Sometimes it is good to review my writing, not because the writing itself is particularly inspiring but because it reminds me of where my heart and soul was either immediately before or during the writing.

I do like writing about sex. I like considering the significance of being a sexual person. I like to explore the myths and untruths, particularly around female sexuality and I do feel incredibly passionate about the need to liberate women from the restraints that certain parts of society have placed on them to hide or suppress their instinctual sexual thoughts and actions.
Hot women are still considered slightly lewd in some places!

I also like writing sexual fantasies. Some of the stories that I have written on here may have been inspired by a totally non-sexual situation that I have embellished into a saucy or steamy situation, partly to prove that there is a sexual world out there if only we allowed ourselves to see it, if only others enabled us to be sexual without feeling as though we are morally corrupt.
Yes, morality and sexuality are not mutually exclusive but perhaps that is for another blog.
Come to think of it, morality and sexuality are good partners if you are thinking of yourself, others and the coming together of body, mind and soul.
Yes, definitely another blog!

Anyway, my purpose for writing today is about writing.
I am still very concerned about the lack of decent, erotic writing.

I have recently read, or should I say, half read “Wetlands” by Charlotte Roche.
Since writing about it previously, I still have not finished the book, mainly because of a certain amount of inertia. I haven’t actually found a reason to complete it because I get the theme. I got it in Chapter One and it has continued throughout the book.
To some extent, it is a very refreshing read. The woman writes coarsely, which in the first few pages of the book is, as I said, quite refreshing. She leaves no stone unturned. She shies away from no subject and explicitly explains the smell, sloppiness and simplification of the sexual act of penetration – be it anal, oral or vaginal. She writes enthusiastically about masturbation, and not just simple finger fucks or the occasional use of a sex toy. She writes about stuffing every day objects inside her and also writes about filling herself with objects that most would consider quite offensive to consider placing inside one’s fanny.

And so it continues throughout the book. She has written to shock. Yet at the same time, she has written to say that there really shouldn’t be these gross taboos about sex.
I like that purpose. I like the idea that she is trying, in her own slightly coarse way, to say that it is okay to write about these things. It is okay to think these things.
My problem with this writing is that it perpetuates the notion that sex is a little bit dirty, and although I understand her point, I’d really like to see something produced that is less gratuitous.
Sex can be gloriously sloppy and delightfully dirty when you want it to be but it does not have to be portrayed as entirely so.

I am sure there are decent books out there, just as there are decent films that can give the reader or viewer a little bit of intelligent sex, i.e. it can be a huge turn on and incredibly explicit yet still maintain a sense of dignity because sex does not have to be disingenuous or crude. Good, honest, adorable sex, even if it is recreational, can still be dignified and beautiful and certainly worth writing about.

I think one of the problems about sexual writing is that the authors tend to concentrate too much on the thrill factor. I would suggest that some exceptionally good writers, when trying to write about sex, are suddenly consumed by the hope to arouse rather than really feeling it, really getting into the depths of what sex does for your mind and your body.
I am not sure that I am explaining this very well but it is though their main purpose is to get a quick response rather than thinking about the characters, the setting, the story, the sex.
What often emerges from this is that the writing becomes stilted and false. It sounds contrived and although big words and eloquent language may be used, it doesn’t flow. It is almost as though you can feel the embarrassment of the writer, which once more does nothing to eradicate the hang-ups that people have about sex; quite the contrary.
Sometimes, writers write these prosaic paragraphs, interspersed with ‘naughty’ words such as “fuck” and “cock”, hoping that the use of the expletives set against their usual creative styles will in itself create the desired shock factor. Instead, it just appears a little lazy – throw a “fuck” in and people will instantly want to reach out for themselves or their partner. It is all a little too clichéd.

I’m not suggesting that I can do any better. I am possibly guilty of exactly the same crime in my own writing, and in actual fact, writing arousing and sexually stimulating writing is a very finely tuned skill.
I am wondering now whether you have to experience decent sex to enable you to write about it.
And now, all of a sudden, I cannot get the thought Edwina Curry and Alan Titchmarch copulating out of my mind!
Can you really imagine the intensity of sex if you have not experienced it? Can you write about the hunger and the passion if you have not been bereft of the sex that you need and desire? Can you feel that all-consuming brilliance in your own writing if you have no physical experience of it? Can this really be portrayed without having done it?
Oh dear, Edwina will not disappear. Help!

I don’t know the answer to this but I suspect that it would take an exceptional mind to be able to write about good, erotic, sensual sex without experience. And of course, having the experience doesn’t automatically make you an exceptionally brilliant writer. That is a learned skill too. Just because you are a fantastic lover with a wealth of glorious sexual experiences does not mean that you can convey that wonderment on paper.

I suppose there is a possibility that it comes down to a simple fact, and I know that there are plenty that would disagree, but here you go.
Maybe there is actually an incredibly small amount of people who
a) have had mind-blowing sex
and
b) have the capacity, the capability and the desire to write about it

The reason that I have started to write about this today is threefold.

Firstly, I am somewhat annoyed with myself for not having the will to complete the book which is still sitting underneath my bed, and I am conscious that I still need to find that book that I cannot put down because it is stimulating me so much I need to read and masturbate simultaneously.
Secondly, I watched a film the other day which portrayed a ménage a trois so subtly and without fuss or titillation. Although, there was part of me that really wanted to see more, I really liked the erotic nature of the single touches and the ever-so-subtle kisses that I watched. It was beautiful. It implied so much and showed so little. It left the viewer full of thoughts of where this could go visually, enabling the imagination to take the erotica to another plane.
Thirdly, there is an article in the Guardian looking at the 2009 Literary Review Bad Sex Award.
And boy, are there some ‘decent’ candidates!

“The fourteenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Awards took place last week. The awards were set up by Auberon Waugh with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, and Melvyn Bragg.”

Here’s one from one of my favourite men!!
Dave licked between Phyllis's shoulder blades and drove his tongue down her grooved back. She shuddered and, grabbing his thigh, pulled it up and over her own so that he half straddled her. In the confusion of their bodies - his hairy shanks, her sweaty thighs, his bow-taut cock, her engorged basketry of cowl and lip - there was clear intent; so that when he penetrated her, they moved into and out of one another with fluid ease, revving and squealing, before arriving quite suddenly.
Dave and Phyl were having sex in her cottage outside Chipping Ongar.
“Arriving quite suddenly”! – oh please, Mr. Self. Surely you can do better than that!

Here’s an extract from a previous winner.
She's wearing a short, floaty skirt that's more suited to July than February. She leans forward to peck me on the cheek, which feels weird, as she's never kissed me on the cheek before. We'd kissed properly the first time we met. And that was over three years ago.
But the peck on the cheek turns into a quick peck on the lips. She hugs me tight. I can feel her breasts against her chest. I cup my hands round her face and start to kiss her properly, She slides one of her slender legs in between mine. Oh Jack, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I'm inside her, and everything is pure white as we're lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.
Ian Hollingshead from “Twentysomething”.
Breasts, cups, sliding, crotches, bulges, grunts – not good really.
I may scream (not squeak) in a divine cry of ecstasy when I am having an orgasm, as do others but does anyone really “grunt” themselves to climax?

Here is an extract from this year’s shortlist.
Apparently the story is about the seduction of a lesbian by an aging actor. This particular extract is taken from a scene where the actor and the lesbian pick up a girl for a threesome. It involves a green dildo.
First Pegeen stepped into the contraption, adjusted and secured the leather straps, and affixed the dildo so that it jutted straight out. Then she crouched above Tracy, brushing Tracy's lips and nipples with her mouth and fondling her breasts, and then she slid down a ways and gently penetrated Tracy with the dildo. Pegeen did not have to force her open. She did not have to say a word – he imagined that if either one of them did begin to speak, it would be in a language unrecognizable to him. The green cock plunged in and out of the abundant naked body sprawled beneath it, slow at first, then faster and harder, then harder still, and all of Tracy's curves and hollows moved in unison with it. This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though, in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. She could as well have been a crow or a coyote, while simultaneously Pegeen Mike. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.
Philip Roth, of all people, from a book called “The Humbling”

I mean, to be perfectly honest, I have seen and read worse but clearly, it would appear that Mr. Roth has probably not participated in lesbian sex changing sex. The thought of the green dildo is pretty revolting, and the idea of “curves and hollows moving in unison” is certainly an interesting one.
I guess what Mr. Roth has seen is a couple of snippets on a porn site that has given him some ideas to play around with.

But I don’t want to criticise really, and I would like to defend these authors whilst simultaneously criticising them, if that is not seen as somewhat bi-polar. For one has to say that at least they are not brushing sexuality under a carpet. At least they are not proverbially pulling a bed sheet over actress’s boobs, as is seen far too frequently in modern day films. They are acknowledging that there is sexuality in our lives and it is about time that we recognise the fact.

Contrived and stilted language will be overcome eventually once the glorious sexual revolution has taken place. To talk and write in such a way will not be accompanied by the cringes of embarrassment as people feel empowered to move away from the cliché to something more subtle, more beautiful and more erotic without the need for the harshness of the unknown.

As I said at the beginning, it is really difficult to write about sex in a way that is arousing and not clichéd. In some ways it is more difficult for the accomplished and renowned author because there is an assumption that they can write about anything and this clearly isn’t the case.
As for me, I will continue to write even if the only person who is aroused by my writing is myself. And hopefully, I may accomplish something that others can enjoy without wondering where the hell this woman’s writing skills disappeared as she desperately tried to describe the indescribable joy of sex.